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FILMMAKING www.postmagazine.com 17 POST OCTOBER 2016 Do you have a go-to editor that you like to work with? "The funny thing is, I have only worked with one editor in the 15 movies, even since film school — Steve Rosenblum — and it turned out he wasn't available to me. So I said to Steve, 'Who's the one editor that I can hire that can make you jealous — make you feel threatened that I'd want to work with him again?' And he said, 'There's only one editor who I love more than anything and that's Billy Weber.' So of course I called Billy and we got along really well. Billy is a legend among editors, having done everything from Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run to all of Terry Mallick's movies, Warren Beatty's movies. He's a fantastic editor and a great collaborator. We had a great time and that was actually Steve's recommendation." How soon after shooting are you seeing rough cuts? "He's very fast. Editors are generally very fast until you get to a sequence where you've got multiple cameras and many days of shooting, and the pieces can't be put together — a chase sequence or an action sequence. That often takes sometimes a week, sometimes more to put together. If it's just a scene where you've shot one camera or two with just dialogue, I'll be able to take a look at that two days later." Was editor Billy Weber on-set? "He was in Louisiana. It's wonderful to have the editor nearby if you can. Billy works on an Avid." How did you address music and sound effects? "James Newton Howard, who I have worked with so many times, wasn't avail- able, so I listened to a lot of film music and I ended up hiring Henry Jackman, who is very, very talented. He did a score that I liked a lot, which was Captain Phillips. He also worked a lot with Hans Zimmer as a young composer and Hans is someone I've worked with too. I talked to Hans about it and Hans couldn't have recommended him more highly. We met and got along, and so we began to work together on this one. "The movie has certain conventional as- pects, having to do with thrillers, which you want to solve in a juicy way if you can, but it also has also aspects that were different. There is a certain emotional component and a relational element, so I wanted some- one who had great versatility and sophis- tication, as well as just having wonderful themes and melodies and such. I very much enjoyed working with him. "For the post on the movie, I worked with Mark Stoeckinger, who I've worked with before as the supervisor. We did [The Last] Samurai together and others. Andy Nelson did the mix. I think I have done 10 movies with him. He's I think the very best out there. "Mark Stoeckinger was the sound design- er and Andy Nelson was the re-recording engineer — the mixer. We worked at Fox. Andy has a stage at Fox and even though it was a Paramount movie, they were nice enough to let us do the sound there." Looking back, did the film come turn out as you initially anticipated? "No movie is exactly as you expect be- cause it's an organic process, where at a certain point, the movie begins to tell you what it wants to be. I know there are certain directors who storyboard every shot and are determined — or over-de- termined — to make a movie be exactly a certain way. But I really enjoy the process of discovery and seeing what I haven't expected. There are always things. I think Tom's performance was a real surprise. And working with him to find this charac- ter was very interesting and how it could depart from some of the characters he had played before. "I think Cobie Smulders — who had done a certain kind of work before, and never done anything like this — to see her really transform herself both physically and emotionally into this character, that's the most wonderful kind of surprise. That's the kind of surprise you hope will happen. And once you see it, it leaves you to want to do other kinds of things with her." Veteran editor Billy Weber cut the feature on an Avid. Shot throughout Louisiana, the film features an original score by Henry Jackman.